


Hold My Hand

by Willowanderer



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Freindship, Mental Conditioning, Multi, hand holding, loss of self
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-10 01:24:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6932254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Willowanderer/pseuds/Willowanderer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's strange how the simplest memories can  be so important to people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold My Hand

In the Stormtrooper youth barracks they would swap memories.

It wasn’t supposed to be a thing, they were supposed to give up anything they were before. Everything they were before. As they were given up for the glory of their work, and become nothing but the glorious future they were intended for. They trained hard, they learned as they were supposed to or they were weeded out.

But they were children, and still did it, trickling off one by one until they became nothing but the loyal troops with nothing but the memories of being troops.

He had one memory so precious that he replayed it over and over. He never shared it, he horded it. While his squad-mates shared memories of warm light or fruit and one could remember a cake, frosted in sugar intended just for her, decorated with flowers, he kept this to himself.

Even in youth barracks it seemed silly.   
He remembered a book, with simplistic colorful illustrations and simple words he couldn’t quite understand, with two people running hand in hand to stay together. He almost remembered his own tiny hand reaching up for a much larger hand, but whatever had happened after that, made that memory fragment and made it hard to hold onto.

But he remembered the still static picture with the thick lines. They were running together, and their hands were clasped. It was something that people did. People who were not Stormtroopers and marched in formation, and stood firm and did as they were told. People who were not made pressed out of Plasteel for the glory of The Order. By the time he was grown and getting sent off to prove himself, it was faded as a long loved book in his mind.

When he ran he wanted to take the pilot’s hand and hold.

Take me with you. Be a person and run with me.

But he had to appear to be a Stormtrooper for a bit longer and their hands never connected, though even through his armored gloves and the pilot’s jacket he could feel the warmth of another body.

But when he ran into the desert, Poe Dameron was gone, and he never had a chance to grab hold and make that human connection. Just the smell of him lingering in a salvaged jacket, which he wore like camouflage.

So when he had to run again, he took the chance and he grabbed her hand. And even though his fear, he felt like maybe he could be human.


End file.
